Modern research and technology have provided society with a wide variety of electronic devices. Some of these modern electronic devices are very powerful and useful to their users. For example, modern video cameras and video camera/recorders (camcorders) have made it possible for many people to routinely see and hear both live and recorded audio video segments or clips. Furthermore, electronic mail (e-mail) allows fast and easy personal communications among friends and families, as well as practical communication within and among businesses. Part of what makes e-mail effective is that unlike a live phone call or an on-line chat, the sender and recipient need not be on line simultaneously to communicate; thus, their schedules need not be coordinated, and the sender need not interrupt the recipient as happens in a live phone call.
Along with the ability to record an audio/video clip, for example, of young children playing with a new toy, comes the desire to share the clip with another person, perhaps at a distance. Today's dominant form of sharing recorded audio/video clips relies on letters and packages that are physically delivered. Nevertheless, today's Internet and e-mail connected world makes physical delivery seem slow and cumbersome; a video tape or disk must be written or copied, packaged, addressed and shipped. Of course, there is often a significant wait for it to be physically delivered.
While attaching an audio/video clip to an electronic mail message is done today, it is not commonplace. This is partly because of the potentially very large size of audio/video clips, depending on the duration of the clip, its image size and its image quality.
Further, the mechanisms used for routing and delivery of relatively small size electronic text messages are not well suited for routing and delivery of relatively large size media such as audio/video clips. For example, it is common for delivery of an e-mail message to require that at least three copies of the message exist: one on the client that originated the e-mail, one on the mail server, and one on the client for which the e-mail message is destined. The server copy may be deleted after successful delivery, but it must exist as a full copy of the message during the delivery process, which may take days or longer if problems are encountered (such as a server or client being down or temporarily unavailable).
Further, it is common for there to be multiple mail servers between the sender client and the receiver client, perhaps one linked to each client by a local area network, with the two mail servers being linked by the Internet or by a wide area network. Each intermediate server requires its own full copy of the e-mail message, at least during the period of time that the e-mail message is in the process of being delivered to and from each server. These intermediate copies occupy digital storage space, and they require server time and bandwidth to read, to write and to delete when no longer needed.